PART 3

by Shades

What will you do when you’ve been cornered, the chips are down, and your back’s against the wall? What will be acceptable when it wasn’t before and what lines will you now cross?

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Chapter One

Comfortably sprawled in a patch of sunlight in the Lounge, Adam laid aside his pen and notebook and smiled as he listened to Pat and Rick’s good-natured bickering over the results of last night’s World Series baseball game: a hard fought battle between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees that had gone right down to the final minute.

“I’m telling you, the officials should have stepped in!” Pat sprinkled an extra spoonful of sugar into his coffee. “It was the bottom half of the eighth with loaded bases! Everyone knows that Coleson could have blasted that pitch right outta the park, he knows exactly what to do with a circle ball from Abrams, but he got thrown off by that streaker!” Some clinking interrupted his rant as he stirred the coffee. “The guy said afterwards that he did it specifically to screw with Coleson’s head. It could have cost the Yankees the whole game if Talihasse hadn’t missed the catch.”

“Well if it had, the Yankees deserved it for sending in a newbie who couldn’t keep his head in the game.” Rick was grinning as he deliberately wound up Pat. “If they’d lost because of it, it was a fair and square win as far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re just sour because the Mets didn’t even make it into the semis,” Pat snarked back, his coffee in one hand and cap in the other. “C’mon, we’ve got that meeting in five.”

“Yeah, yeah, coming,” Rick grumbled and scooped up his things, then looked over in his direction. “Adam, behave. We’re leaving you unsupervised, don’t make us regret it.”

“Good and doctor-approved behaviour, mind you!” Pat quickly added with a grin - five days into Koala and they’d all known each other more than well enough to know what any of them would do with a vague, open-ended instruction like ‘behave’.

“S.I.G.” Adam smiled back and waved them off. “I’ll be good, promise.”

“We’ll hold you to that.” Rick tossed off the remark as he headed out the door, Pat close behind.

As soon as the door shut, Adam shook his head and huffed a laugh, collecting up his pen and book again.

They were still fussing over him.

He’d spent a total of three weeks in Sickbay, two on convalescent leave in a holiday house in Boston (with a rotating roster of ‘babysitters’ to keep an eye on him), and he was on week two of four of light duties. Right now his only jobs were desk duty and getting himself back into condition, and he’d taken care to by and large behave himself and not give the others anything to worry about.

That wasn’t to say that everything was smooth sailing.

Once it was over, Paul had had a (well justified) freak out about things. He was still fussing - it always took him a while to calm down after a scare like this and he was reminded that he’d get up when they wouldn’t - but the worst of Paul’s fussing had been headed off because Fawn and Gary Welks, their on-site physiotherapist, had officially designated Paul as his gym-buddy. Being able to participate in fixing the problem had gone a long way to soothing the rattled Spec-Ops, and Adam was very glad of Paul’s help - Paul had absolutely no problem calling a stop to things if he was pushing it in his own need to get back to operational fitness. The others had all had their own freak outs as well (which hadn’t been helped by a small run in with a chest infection while he was groundside) and ‘Squad Dad Brad’ was yet to subside, but they’d stopped treating him like cracked glass, which helped a lot.

Looking at the open notebook in his hand, Adam pushed all that aside for a moment as he contemplated what the open page contained: his most recent attempt to organise the things he wanted to include in his next letter to his family. Specifically, this page was all about what he wanted to say to his father, as his relationship with John Svenson were still very much classed as ‘delicate’ and ‘complicated’.

While he was groundside he’d met with his family for lunch and that had gone well, but at a follow up meeting over coffee with his father there’d been a… disagreement… and that disagreement had escalated.

Unfortunately the habits of years were hard to break on both sides.

When he’d called Doctor Orchid in the aftermath, seeking advice and a safe outlet, she had suggested writing letters instead of face to face or phone conversations to keep the lines of communication open while giving each other some much needed space. Specifically, she had instructed them to use hand-written letters, with the intent of making them both slow down and actually consider their words in a way that emails didn’t.

‘And ‘consider’ is exactly what I have to do,’ Adam mused as he re-read what he’d just written, some long-dormant truths he’d wanted to tell his father but never had the time or the opportunity to do so.

He cast his eye over the paragraph, trying to imagine how John Svenson would react to it.

‘Playing the stock market is easy for me, Dad, you know that. I’ve been doing it since high school, and I know you can look at my account and see how well I’ve been doing since. I know you want me to be part of the company, using those skills to grow the business, but everything that makes me a good businessman and financier - talking to people, negotiations, seeing patterns and rhythms and everything else - all of those things make me really, really good at my job too. I wanted something more than just being another Svenson in Svencorp, slotting in right alongside everyone else. I wanted to make my own mark on the world, to take on a different challenge, but at the same time do something meaningful.’

Giving voice to a bitter sigh, Adam clicked the pen and drew a line through the paragraph. He knew exactly how his father would take it: badly.

‘This isn’t one of those cheesy holiday movies where I pour my heart out, he has a sudden epiphany and we’ll end years of sniping at each other by hugging it out. Real life is much more complicated.’ Adam scrubbed a hand over his face and slumped back in his chair. ‘I just don’t get him. Why doesn’t he understand that my job is just as valuable and meaningful as his? Sure, I’m not in the papers, well,’ he allowed himself a wry chuckle, ‘ ‘Adam Svenson’ isn’t, ‘Captain Blue’ has been though. But,’ Adam could feel his face take on a moody cast, ‘he doesn’t know I’m ‘Captain Blue’. He knows I’m involved with Spectrum, but that’s it.’ Adam rubbed his brow. ‘I wish I could tell him. That might sort out some of this mess. He’ll know I’m doing something important, that I’m not wasting my talents and not getting the attention he thinks I should be getting, but that’d put them all at risk. That Bereznik bug bomb showed how much danger they’re in already just because of their link to me.’

“Hey.”

Adam looked over - Brad had stuck his head in the door.

“You going to your Radar Room shift or not?” Grey asked, good humour twinkling in his eyes.

“What?” A glance at his watch confirmed that yes, he had lost track of time. “Ack, yes, going.” Blue shut the notebook, picked his cap up off the floor and carefully stood up - last month he had learned the phrase ‘positional hypotension’ through personal and practical experience. “Thanks Brad.”

“No problem.”

0o0o0

Today was Friday, which meant the teaspoon with a tumbled citrine in the handle and mint tea in the tea glass gilded with poppies. Franciszek had, as usual, brewed it perfectly, and because it was her last cup of the day he had placed a honey snap biscuit in the saucer, her usual treat to end the work day on a pleasant note.

Cobra took comfort in all of it. Today she very much needed the little rhythms and patterns she used to keep herself sane and grounded in the chaotic and unruly world in which she lived. Standing at the window with her tea in hand, she stared across the city of Katannia, searching the horizon for the airbase that’d been hacked out of the foothills.

Half an hour ago she had handed over the last piece in the puzzle: the flight plan data that would make the mission viable.

Her part of the project was now over.

General Bazyil Kovalenko was taking over.

Tomorrow was ‘D-Day’.

‘Letting go of it is harder than I thought.’ Cobra sipped her tea. ‘I’ve invested so much into this!’ She couldn’t see the airbase, it simply was too far, but she could visualise in her mind’s eye what would be happening right now as final tests were run, checks were made and the last preparations were completed before the soldiers were sent to their bunks to snatch a few hours of sleep before they rose with grey light of the false dawn.

She had wanted to go, to gather up a cadre of her best agents and run a side mission dedicated to getting at the archives and files before Spectrum could delete their treasure trove of secrets, but when she asked, General Kovalenko had denied her.

“You have served your country well, Colonel Bugayev,” he had informed her, his time-worn face stern, but underneath the bushy brows, his eyes were warm. “Your rewards will come, and they will be many, but right now is the time for soldiers, not spies. You will have your time again later, once the objective is secured.”

‘I will have to be content with that promise,’ Svetlana told herself. ‘Yuri and I will be picking over the carcass together, but interrogating any prisoners will be my task and mine alone. Oh, if we could get our hands on Colonel White himself, what a prize he would be! We’ll have the World Government on its knees if we can take him alive. Other prisoners can be ransomed or used as leverage against the trade embargos. Kovalenko will need to be … no.’ Cobra shook her head to force her mind away from the temptation of daydreaming about what could be. ‘No, I must not be distracted by the possible, not when there are so many things to do in the now. Kovalenko is competent and a professional, he knows how much is riding on this and he can be trusted to keep his ego in check. He won’t deviate from the mission, he’ll only send his best men.’

A deep breath in, a pause to hold it, then she breathed out, exhaling her fears, her worries and her anxieties at the same time. ‘I must be focused. I must be prepared. We will have a great deal of work to do, but once it is over…’ Svetlana smiled at her reflection in the lexan and gave herself a moment to indulge one of her daydreams. ‘When it is over and all the doing is done, I will meet my beloved at the altar and we will have the rest of our lives together. But that is for later, now is not the time to rest on my laurels. I still have a job to do and I will see it done.’

Settling herself back into the necessary mindset, Cobra finished her tea and cleared her mind of distractions. The tea glass went back on the saucer, the biscuit vanished in two bites, then she was seated in her oxblood office chair and drawing across a message pad.

She had a new task for her mole at W.A.S.

Chapter Two

Clop - clop - clop - clop

Aggie ‘David’ Graves shivered, seriously regretting her choice of footwear as the sound of her wedge heels echoed down the dim and empty hallways of the World Aeronautical Society’s administrative block. It was late, the office staff had all gone home for the day, the most recent batch of cadets were all in their bunks, and the only other people around were the janitors and some guards.

Another shiver crept down her spine as she checked her six before moving up to the next level. She’d always hated being ‘alone’ in the admin building at night, even before Shoehorn had recruited her for spyhunting. The human brain being the pattern-recognition engine that it is, it’d left her with some unique associations with the W.A.S. admin block, which was part of why she’d left.

‘I don’t regret doing it,’ David paused at a cross-passage to listen, ‘‘Test pilot’ and ‘adrenaline junkie’ are practically interchangeable, and what a kick that was, but I left for a reason. Being back…’ she shook her head. ‘I had to come.’ She briefly thought of her date (a smoking hot physicist from JPL), left behind in a bar in Montrose. ‘Duck’s message started with ‘Urgent’, the middle was ‘in the commander’s office’, and ended with ‘DEFCON1’. I couldn’t ignore that, not from Duck.’

She’d jumped in her heavily modified black Corvette Stingray and screamed across the desert. The car got her past at least three police cruisers on radar duty (she’d cracked 200 mph, they didn’t even bother with a pursuit) and the pass that Duck had given her got her through the gates. When she parked, she’d discovered that her ‘good’ shoes had been under a now half-empty water bottle in her gym bag, so she’d left them there, grabbed her bomber jacket, slung that over her maxi dress, and headed inside.

David’s steps slowed as she ascended to the upper management level, drawing her jacket closer around herself. ‘I don’t like this.’ It was quiet… the kind of quiet that in her spyhunting days got the hairs on the back of her neck starting to move. She glanced at a window in passing, using the dim reflections to check behind herself. No one was there of course, but shifting her focus let her glimpse the mostly dark accommodation block that’d been her home so many years ago. For some reason her brain dredged up an ancient memory from her early days in the dorms, a night when they’d all gathered together like teenagers at school camp and the older hands had passed down some of the stories and traditions - and especially all the ghost stories.

The W.A.S. had a lot of ghosts.

The Blue Man was an unfortunate tech who’d suffocated in a painting booth and could be seen inside it around the anniversary of his death. A pale figure spotted striding the flight line just before dawn was Old Greg, a pilot who didn’t punch out in time and died on the tarmac. Tom Tom was a mischievous poltergeist who knocked things over in Hangar Three, and his buddy Jo Jo did the same in the kitchen. A recent one was Judy, one of the staffers who’d been found dead in the basement and liked to play with the record room drawers if she thought she was being forgotten.

‘It feels like a few of the ghosts are gathering right now…’ David felt in her jacket pocket for the reassurance of the Kel-Tec P32 she kept there. It was a tiny little pistol with only eight rounds in the mag, but she’d compensated for that with hollow-point bullets that she’d ‘hot’ loaded - more gunpowder than standard to make them more powerful. It wasn’t good for the longevity of the pistol, but a gun was easy to replace. People weren’t.

Finally her destination came into view: the commander’s office. The hallway lights were dimmed and as expected there was a faint glow of light around the cracked-open door, but something about the scene had those hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up. David slipped her shoes off, left them by the emergency stairs and slowly crept forwards, her pistol in hand and every sense on high alert.

Stopping by the door, David crouched and listened. She could make out the smell of alcohol - some sort of spirit, she wasn’t enough of a drinker to pick what - and the clunk of a heavy glass being put down and the glug of liquid backed up that assessment. A heavy sigh could have only been Duck. Only he could heave a woebegotten sigh like that.

She listened a little longer. ‘Huh… no sign of Commander Phillip… what on earth is Duck doing in the commander’s office, but without the commander?’ Another minute slipped past. ‘Well, I’m not going to find out by lurking out here. In for a penny, in for a pound.’ David straightened, put the pistol in her jacket pocket and adjusted it so it was in perfect grabbing position, and rapped on the doorframe. “Duck?”

“David, c’mon in.”

Aggie pushed the door open and paused to take everything in.

It was immediately obvious that Duck was alone in the room. He looked rough, unshaven and puffy-faced, his shirt collar unbuttoned and inelegantly sprawled behind the imposing desk. There was a mostly-drunk bottle of Glenfiddich in front of him and he was in the middle of raising a full glass of it to his lips. A desk lamp was the source of the light, angled towards one of the side walls so it wouldn’t blind either of them. The pools of shadows it created almost hid something else as well - Gary had taken the commander’s name plate, turned it over, and scrawled ‘Commander Gary York’ on it in thick, black ink.

“Siddown Aggie, take a load off,” Gary slurred, gesturing with the glass with his left hand and moving his right to his lap. What he was doing she didn’t know, her line of sight was blocked by the desk.

“I’ll stand.” She was firm on that, her tone not giving a single iota of room to argue. “Duck,” she gestured at the room around them, “what the hell?”

“You’ll understand me, I know you will. You always got it.” Gary took a long drink from the glass. “You shoulda been flying the combat planes, not the cargo ones. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. None of it was! Nothing ever is!”

“What wasn’t fair, Ducky?” David coaxed. Her tone was soft, but her mind was working like lightning, calculating every move she’d have to make if she wanted to draw her pistol vs shoot through her jacket pocket vs turn and bolt for the door. ‘The desk will slow him down, but I can’t count on the booze tipping the odds in my favour. Duck’s got a liver like a sponge.’

“Anything!” he half shouted, the alcohol sloshing out of the glass as he slammed it down on the desk. “You know what? I was glad that Shoe ran away! He’d’ve gotten Torres’ job for sure if he’d stayed! But he didn’t. I stayed, I was loyal, I stuck it out, I put in the hard yards! But that prissy bastard weaselled his way in! Yeah, the selection committee said it was temporary, but,” he put down the glass and waved at the wall calendar, “lookit how long good ol’ Leo’s been in, he was gonna be made permanent.”

‘Oh… oh no…’ A terrible sinking feeling in her gut, David had to fight to keep her expression under control. “Duck, talk to me bud, what happened?”

“I got drunk.” The laugh was more like a sob. “Blackwells Corner, SkyHigh Bar. Day after Leo got it I met this really pretty girl there. Well, I thought I met her. Found out too late my favourite bartender picked her for me. He’d been keeping tabs on me for a couple o’ years, keepin’ me coming back with generous pours and sometimes freebies, chatting away an’ waiting for an opportunity. When the promotion came up…” he stopped long enough to grimace, “well, either way, I was gonna be seeing my favourite bartender afterwards, to celebrate or looking for someone to commiserate. I was at the bar, an’ this girl comes over to me. Absolute knockout, like you, and we got talking, and then we were back at her place and then…” He shook his head. “She agreed with me, it wasn’t fair, wasn’t fair at all, and she had ideas on how to get rid of Leo-boy. I had to make him look bad, you see. And if he looked bad, but I looked good, he’d go and I’d get the top job like I was supposed to. The job I earned.”

“And then what happened?” Thank heavens her voice didn’t crack.

“I met her again a week later an’ we talked some more about how to make Leo look bad, and she was asking questions, she needed more information for more ideas.” Duck half sobbed again. “Davey, it was so easy! A bit here, a bit there, some drinks…” He tapped the open bottle in front of him. “She gave me this. A present. We’d have some after sex.” He picked up the glass and knocked back the last of it. “I used to imagine she was you, but you never looked at me like that. That was okay. I could dream.”

David did her best to not react to that and steered him back to what was important. “Duck, who did she work for?” The pieces were rapidly falling into place. It was a tale as old as time: find a weakness, exploit it, entangle and enmesh the target in a silken net of whatever they desired, and they’d be open for exploitation by their handler. Sunken cost fallacy, chasing the fickle hope of ‘maybe I can get myself out, maybe I can avoid the consequences and having my entire life razed to the ground’ would keep the target from reaching out until it was too late to escape the net. ‘And in this case the weakness was Duck’s pride and his resentment at being passed over for promotion. Shoe warned us about stuff like this. ‘Gambler’ and ‘test pilot’ are interchangeable too.’

“I didn’t know for sure until the team started dying.” Gary shook his head sadly. “I thought she was from California, perfect-looking Valley Girl, workin’ for Boeing or somethin’. Not that that made what I did any better…or what I was gonna do.” He looked up at her, his eyes wet with gathering tears. “I protected you, Davy-girl. I saw what was coming an’ I protected you. I saved you. I had to save you. An’ saving you protected me, so she let me do it. I saved you.” He stated the last with absolute finality, as if the one act justified his actions and absolved him of everything he’d done.

“You did save me, you absolutely did,” David soothed him, but at the same time very aware that his right hand was still out of sight. “The girl, what did she want?”

“The records room.” His brow furrowed in confusion. “It was weird though, she only wanted some of the file, not all of it, not the flight data, just the,” he waved his left hand in a vague gesture, groping for the word he wanted. “Transponder, that’s it, the transponder and… stuff.”

“For what plane, Duck?”

“One of the civvies.” He clumsily poured himself another drink, amber whisky spilling over his knuckles to soak into the already sodden blotter. “The cargo/passenger one.”

‘The Swift, it has to be.’ David wanted to throw her mind back to the meeting with Colonel White - she was half sure she’d sensed something when she’d mentioned the Swift - but Gary started talking again so she had to stay in the present.

“I got another order from ‘em.” He gulped down more whiskey before clarifying “from Bereznik.”

“What do they want?”

“They wanned me t’ bring Leo with me to the bar, callin’ it a show of good will or something. My girl had a friend, she’d go off with ‘im.” He cracked a lecherous, drunken smile. “No one’s gonna stay squeaky clean with what those girls have under the hood. Figured they’re gonna make a nice scandal, he’d hafta step down and I’d get to step up.” He looked around the office. “Step up and make all this mine.” Another three gulps and he was putting the empty glass down.

‘And then Bereznik don’t just have a mole in W.A.S., they have the commander himself, an agent who’s in too deep to ever escape them,’ Aggie silently completed the thought. ‘Once he’s in place it’ll be open season on everything that passes through this base.’ “So what are you going to do?”

This time his smile was sad. “Only thing I can.” He sat up straight. “Tell Shoehorn I’m sorry.”

Aggie was expecting a gun, so she was badly out of place when he clapped his right hand to his mouth and bit down on something.

“Duck!” Five running steps and she was around the desk, but it was too late. A white froth already bubbling from his mouth, Gary York gurgled, his eyes rolled up, then with a spasmodic twitch he slumped over and died.

Chapter Three

“Colonel White, priority message from Aggie Graves.”

White was halfway to sitting up before Lieutenant Clay, the nightshift radio operator, finished speaking. It took him a moment to push past the fog of sleep and recall exactly who Aggie Graves was, but he was all the way upright with his feet on the floor when he finally made the connection. “Re-” he had to clear his throat to get the croakiness out, “report, Leftenant.” He stood and started to peel off his pyjamas, there was no way he’d be going back to sleep, not after a priority report.

Eight pithy sentences got the message across, finishing with “...she is writing up a full report now to pass on.”

“Very good, have it on my desk the instant it arrives,” White ordered, half-dressed and reaching for his undershirt. ‘Bereznik have data on the newest model of our most common aircraft. This is deeply concerning.’ He pulled it on and stamped his feet into his boots. “Clay, have…!”

RRRBOOOOMMMM!!!!

Cloudbase shivered from bow to stern under the force of the reverberating explosion.

An internal explosion.

“SIR! That was from the hangar bay, an SPJ just landed and someone shot the internal doors with a handheld missile! We’re under attack!”

“SPECTRUM IS RED!” White roared as he picked himself up off the floor. “Full lockdown, sound battlestations and launch all Angels!”

“Yessir!”

Klaxons wailed a split second later and White snatched up his tunic, cap and gun on his way to his private elevator to the command deck. How the hell they’d gotten on board his base was a problem for later, they had unwelcome guests to deal with first.

‘I had thought Cobra dead, and whatever plans she had were dead along with her,’ was the grim thought as he zipped up the tunic and hit the ‘up’ arrow with his elbow. ‘Dear Lord, do not let the price for my mistake be too high.’

0o0o0

Two hours, twenty four minutes earlier, over the North Sea…

“Dude, cut the whistling!”

“You cut the whistling.”

“Oh real mature, Brady.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lt Anurak grinned at his long-term friend and co-pilot, Lt Brady, then turned back to the serious business of getting their resupply flight up to Cloudbase. Both non-coded lieutenants, they were good enough friends to be on first and last name basis, but they were careful to not to use them ‘on duty’ - cockpit recorders and all.

Picking up a chart, he checked his map and ran his eye over the various gauges. Yes, he liked to boast that with how often they flew food up to Cloudbase he could do the landing in his sleep, but complacent pilots became dead pilots. ‘I’d be a robot if I didn’t get bored with supply runs though,’ Anurak admitted to himself. The less-than-glamourous nature of cargo flights did get a little wearying sometimes.

Weight limits meant that Cloudbase carried a fortnight’s supply of food plus five days as a cushion, so resupply flights in cargo SPJs were his and Brady’s bread and butter- pun totally intended. Sometimes they got to do something exciting like transporting mysterious, heavily guarded boxes, or make the occasional parts run to one of the concealed vehicle points, but most of the time it was big, insulated crates of food and other supplies.

A check of his watch confirmed it was time to call in, and a flick of a switch got him transmitting to Cloudbase. “SPJ 439-Zulu to Cloudbase. Over.”

“Cloudbase receiving,” a woman replied, her warm voice lightly tinted with what they’d agreed had to be a German accent.

Anurak grinned and poked Brady to update the tally chart, they had Lt Clay again! “SPJ 439-Zulu, we are enroute to you now, estimated flight time two hours, twenty three minutes, that’s two hours, two three minutes. Over.”

“Roger, what are you bringing us, SPJ 439-Zulu?”

“Lunch.” Anurak grinned, he could get away with being a little cheeky with Clay. “Fresh fruit, veggies, dairy. Over.”

“We’ll be glad to have it,” Clay responded, her voice warm, then she got back to business. “Approach is from southwest, wind speed currently four knots across the deck, south south east. Over.”

“Roger that Cloudbase, will call on approach for update. Out.” Anurak flicked the switch back to ‘off’. “Four knots cross, you got that?”

“Yep, easy,” Brady offered a lazy smile. “This is a milk run, Anu, I got this.”

“With our cargo, literally.” Anurak laughed, then ducked the pen Brady threw at him. “Hey!”

0o0o0

“... Will call on approach for update. Out.”

It was cramped in the cockpit with the four of them plus the equipment, but they made it work. Colonel Pyotr Jesionowski of the Bereznik Army Special Forces Unit looked at his technology specialist, both hands pressing the cuffs of his headphones to his ears as he hunched over what he’d called a ‘vocorder box’, spliced into the radio system. “Bartek, do you have enough?”

“Yes sir,” the lieutenant nodded, hooking the headphones around his neck. “Andrev, pass me the cable.”

The copilot passed over the requested cable, it was plugged into the ‘vocoder’, and the lieutenant flicked a couple of switches, adjusted a dial and put the headphones back on. “Andrev, give me a test message.”

Andrev toggled his radio and spoke in heavily accented English. “SPJ 439-Zulu, test test test.” A beat later the same message came out of the speaker on the side of the vocoder, but this time rendered in a perfect mimicry of the radio operator on the doomed SPJ flying some ten thousand feet ahead and above them.

“Perfect.” Bartek grinned up at him. “We won’t have the delay when we transmit for real.”

“Good work.” Colonel Jesionowski clapped him on the shoulder and carefully made his way into the main body of the cloned Spectrum Passenger Jet.

‘SPJ-B’ as it had been dubbed, had been secretly constructed in a well-guarded hangar on the outskirts of the capital, where it would be safe under General Kovalenko’s watchful eye.

On the outside it was a perfect mimic of a standard SPJ, right down to the placement of the rivets. It had been built from photos of both crashed aircraft and opportunistic images taken at airfields where they had spies and sympathisers. The hobbyist internet communities had been of particular help - at the news of an elusive aircraft like the Spectrum SPJ, aircraft and military enthusiasts would swarm, cameras and telephoto-lenses in hand, and then post their images online to boast of their findings. It had been long, patient work that had to be shepherded past many attempts to divert funding and manpower away to pet projects of other generals, but the general had doggedly persisted and the payoff was about to be huge.

All heads turned towards him the moment he opened the cockpit door, fifty hand-picked and rigorously trained soldiers crammed into the space alongside their equipment and other supplies.

“Listen up!” Jesionowski had to shout above the engine noise. They’d had to forgo some of the insulation to fit in more men and equipment. “We are about to insert into the line. Once we are in, rest, we have a long battle ahead of us, but once we achieve the objective, we will usher our motherland into her proper place in the world: queen amongst nations!”

A roar of approval at his words, Jesionowski grinned tightly at them, then turned back to the cockpit. “Andrev, ready?”

“Yessir.” An over the shoulder thumbs-up accompanied the words.

“Bartek, override the target aircraft transponder.” Jesionowski ordered, doing his best to ignore how his gut churned with acid. This was the crucial part, only made possible because of the B.E.S.A. and Colonel Cobra, an utterly terrifying woman he’d only met once and hoped to never meet again. So much was riding on this one moment. To borrow a phrase from the bomb disposal squads, if this worked, they’d be heroes, if it didn’t, well, it wouldn’t be their problem any longer.

Another bank of equipment was powered on. His face taut with tension, Bartek manipulated the controls with the skill of a concert pianist, brown eyes fixed on the quivering needles on the gauges as he fenced with the other aircraft’s computer while keeping the battle secret from both the aircraft and Cloudbase. “Override… complete!”

“Activate jamming.” Jesionowski grabbed for the radio on his equipment vest and leaned over to look between the two pilots and peer through the windscreen at the distant beacon lights of the doomed SPJ. “BZ-762, now.”

The pilots - both of SPJ-B and the lurking Bereznikian ‘Molniya’ - ‘Lightning’ - stealth fighter jet knew exactly what to do.

They had been practising this move for weeks.

The SPJ-B’s nose came up in a smooth arc to infiltrate SPJ 439-Zulu’s flight path, and at the same time the Lightning swooped down from its position above and behind the SPJ to lay a stream of bullets into the aircraft’s cockpit. A heartbeat later and the dead SPJ fell out of the sky, spinning like a sycamore seed as it shed bits and pieces of its airframe. They were over the North Sea so a short-lived plume of smoke would be the only marker of the aircraft’s grave. His job done, BZ-762 waggled his wings in farewell and peeled away, and a glance at the clock told Jesionowski that the exchange had taken less than twenty seconds.

Jesionowski silently clapped all three men on the shoulder and went into the back, squeezing himself into the gap that had been reserved for him near the cockpit door. ‘I won’t be able to sleep, but I will be able to rest,’ he told himself as he settled down.

The wait was over and the hard part was about to begin.

That they had no real idea of the layout of Cloudbase had kept him, the general and his officers lying awake at night, so in response they’d drilled for months, putting together dozens of possible layouts in equally as many combinations and brainstorming ideas for equipment and tactics, constantly asking each other what they would do and the measures they would take if they were the defending force, then coming up with ways to counter them all.

The truth of the matter was that the only way to overcome the ‘home advantage’ was speed and flexibility. They would have to overwhelm their enemy, neutralise resistance, flood through the base, gain intel on key locations and capture those locations as quickly as possible. ‘Once we land,’ he reminded himself, ‘we blow the interior hangar doors to keep them from locking us out. When we have the beachhead, we have secured their critical areas and their defences are neutralised, then we can bring in more troops and finish the job. But again, we must be quick. I do not doubt they would rather see their base destroyed than see it in our hands.’ He could respect that, but in the same vein, he would kill them all without flinching to see his mission complete.

With that, Colonel Pyotr Jesionowski cleared his mind and closed his eyes. In just over two hours rest would be in short supply. He needed every bit of it he could get.

Chapter Four

It was as if he’d stepped back in time to the start of the British Civil War, when he’d been a young hot-head of a captain, oh so proud of his first command and his crew and ready to take on the world - which, a few weeks later, he effectively did. He could perfectly remember the watershed moment when he’d declared mutiny and plunged into battle against the loyalist forces of the regime that had taken over his homeland. The worst of the memories of battle had been somewhat softened by time, but the unique confusion, the tension, the moment of doubt over different decisions and orders, and yes the adrenaline surge particular to combat, it all surged back to the forefront of his mind, and it all felt exactly the same as it did during those tumultuous days.

“Status on Engineering?” White barked out the question, his back to the room and his eyes fixed on a diagram of Cloudbase on the screen behind his desk as he plotted out where to direct their forces next. When the alarm had sounded, long hours of drills had paid off in full. Critical areas locked down with armed guards surging into position while other personnel retreated to their emergency posts. All his captains bar Blue were on the move with their teams of Cloudbase commandos at their backs, aggressively hunting out the invaders and making them fight for every inch of corridor.

“Doors are still holding, but the attackers have deployed cutting gear,” was Green’s crisp report. He’d darted up to the Command Deck just before it could be locked down, now he was working the radios while Clay fended off the attempts at jamming the group radio channel linking the senior officers. “Onyx estimates twenty minutes at most.”

White pulled down his cap microphone so he could transmit his response. “Grey, respond to Engineering. All points, tac dec is authorised.”

“S.I.G.,” was the answer from Grey, and no one objected to the authorisation of ‘tac dec’.

‘Tac dec’ - tactical decompression - was one of Cloudbase’s unique weapons. Because of their usual operational environment of 40,000 ft, everyone posted to Cloudbase was extensively trained in how to respond to both decompression and explosive decompression, and all doors on the base were designed to seal. In the event of an emergency it would turn every cabin, office and workspace into a safe, pressurised area - a ‘lifeboat’ of sorts - and every room had respirators. If need be they could secure the crew, blow every airlock and descend to a safe altitude before the air supply could run out.

Flicking the mic back up, White refocused on the diagram behind his desk. Listening in on the radio chatter as Grey coordinated with his squad leader, White glowered at the lurid red splotches that marked out the known locations of Bereznik fighters. There were three teams they knew of - one holding the hangar, one at Engineering, and one making their way up towards the Command Deck - and the sailor in him itched to pick up a rifle and deal to them like he did the boarders that had stormed his ship during the war. ‘But that would have been beyond moronic. I am no longer that young hot-head, I’m on the wrong side of fifty for stunts like that and if they capture me, it’s game over. But if they do make it here,’ he could feel his lips thin, ‘well. That’s another matter entirely.’

“Sir!” That was Green, his eyes wide. “Report from Fawn! They’re going after Medical!”

“Oh no they bloody well aren’t!” Scarlet’s snarl exploded over the shared radio call. “Responding now with Mulberry and my team, tell Fawn to bunker down! We’re coming!”

0o0o0

“Get that bleed under control!” Fawn instantly regretted how he’d snapped, but James waved it away and focused on stuffing wadding into the patient’s bleeding leg.

Fawn appreciated the gesture at the same time he acknowledged the situation: no one could be expected to remain calm and composed, not with the dull thudding and the groaning of protesting hydraulics from a pack of Bereznik commandos doing their best to lever open the heavy security doors across the main entrance, crack open their protective shell, and get at the oh so soft and vulnerable targets within: the wounded and the medics looking after them.

‘They’re going to get a not-so-nice surprise if they do get in.’ Fawn touched the pistol in his lab coat pocket. ‘We’re not as soft as they might think. I might not be military, but it’s a poor doctor who can’t defend their patient.’

A quick look around the main area told him that his orders were being carried out with the usual precision he’d come to expect of his team. Burgundy and the nurses were getting all the patients moved into the mens’ ward, the orderlies had built a barricade of tipped over stretcher beds across the main entrance, the legs pointed out to entangle and ensnare the invaders, and a coating of lignocaine on the floor would ensure they didn’t have an easy footing. A second barricade was half-constructed at the mens’ ward entrance, ready to be hauled into place as soon as the last patient was carried in. Their half-dozen guards were already hunched behind cover, respirators dangling around their necks and rifles and gas grenades in hand.

“Edward.”

Fawn looked over to see Burgundy striding up. ‘She’s looking how I feel, damn terrified but damned if I’m gonna show it’.’ “What is it?”

“You going to be okay?” She tapped the bulky shape of the pistol under her lab coat, then pointedly looked at the door.

“No idea.” Edward shook his head. “You?”

“Ditto. I know ‘do no harm’ isn’t actually part of our oath but…” Her mouth twisted in a grimace and Edward understood exactly what she meant.

“Ditto.” Fawn offered her a wry turn of his lips that wasn’t a smile. “But we did swear to protect our patients and our people.”

“And we will.” Burgundy nodded once and squared her shoulders. “Any…”

A squeal from the thick double doors interrupted her, the blunt tip of a crowbar appearing for a moment as they were wedged apart, then the hydraulics pushed back, the doors shrieked on their tracks, and the gap vanished as they slammed shut again.

“Docs, get back!” one of the guards barked out, waving them away. “We got this, get back there with the patients!”

Burgundy half turned to obey, then stopped. “Wait!” She held up her hand and stood with her head tilted, listening. “Hear that?”

Edward listened too, then his eyes widened. Someone was tapping on something in the ceiling! He peered up at the nearest air vent and spied a familiar, grime-smeared face looking down at him. “Scarlet!”

“You’d better pull back, just in case,” he ordered, “I’ve got my team moving in to flank them.”

“And you’re up there because…?” Fawn couldn’t help but ask, smothering his surprise with an exasperated ‘of course he’s found a way into Medical! The lot of them treat ‘lockdown’ as ‘challenge accepted!’ ‘

Scarlet’s answering grin was not nice. “Distraction.” Then he was gone.

Chapter Five

Private Ilya of the Bereznik Army Special Forces Unit clutched his rifle closer and resisted the urge to cross himself. ‘If he sees it, Sergeant Vladimir will smack me over the head and yell at me for being a superstitious idiot from the backwoods, still picking mud from between my toes.’ He fired a glance at the swarthy man - who had more than a passing resemblance to the boar pig back on the family farm - and turned his attention back to watching the corridor while the sergeant bellowed abuse at the team trying to pry open the doors to the onboard hospital.

Ilya swallowed hard. This base, yes it was a technological marvel, but he was a farmer’s son, this… this hovering hunk of mankind’s hubris, floating in the sky like a ship on the sea… to him it screamed blasphemy. There had to be something obscene, something.. something unnatural keeping this thing aloft in defiance of all the rules of nature.

‘And we are here to capture it and bring it to our homeland.’ Ilya gulped again. ‘Not only that, we are breaking into a hospital to do it! Yes, they are the enemy, but still! It’s a hospital! It just does not sit right!’

“Hey!” An unseen woman bellowed from the end of the hallway.

Those on the doors immediately dropped their tools and picked up their guns. Half the squad trained their weapons on the direction the woman’s shout had come from - around the corner to their left - while the others kept their weapons pointed to the right to fend off any ambushes from the other side. It was basic tactical sense - a distraction on one side, while a second force snuck up on them from the other.

“You have one chance,” the woman shouted in heavily accented Bereznikian, “surrender! Now!”

“Bah!” Sergeant Vladimir scoffed. “They are desperate, sending their women to fight us!” He grinned broadly and raised his voice. “Surrender to me, girl, and I’ll show you what a real man can do!”

The indelicate noise she made in response didn’t need translation and several of the men muffled their grins at Vladimir’s fuming reaction.

Ilya only heard - or more accurately felt - the thud of a pressurised door being unsealed because he was on the fringe of the group, on the opposite end to the woman. Instinct screamed a warning and he dropped his gun and grabbed for the bulky respirator around his neck.

A split second later, it happened.

Halfway down the hallway a door swept open with a whistling howl of escaping air, one so powerful it sucked a third of them off their feet. Men were screaming in panic, scrambling for their respirators, but the sound was snatched away by the wind’s icy claws.

What wasn’t lost to the wind was the chatter of rifles as a group of soldiers in charcoal tunics, their own respirators clamped firmly onto their faces as they surged out from hiding. Ruthless, efficient, and led by a woman in dark red, they cut down anyone standing and armed with sharp, precise bursts of gunfire. Ilya, his world already greying around the edges as precious air escaped from around his ill-fitting mask, immediately lay on the deck with his hands on his head. One thought was whirling through his head: this could only be punishment. ‘Like Icarus under the sun, we have dared too far!’

Why on earth he waxed poetic in the face of death, he didn’t know.

Because he was lying down, Ilya could feel the vibrations of some massive door clunking shut. The wind stopped, the Spectrum soldiers moved closer in, and Ilya forgot how to breathe when a man stepped out from the open doorway. His bearing clearly marked him as an officer, his bright red uniform was smeared with dust and grease, he had a rifle in hand and his blue eyes were as cold as glacial meltwater.

His command of English wasn’t the greatest and the man’s accent and the muffling of his respirator didn’t help, but Ilya could make out enough to understand the gist of the officer’s orders: collect the survivors, take care of the wounded.

Though his heart was like ice in his chest, Ilya didn’t resist as his arms were roughly grabbed and pulled behind his back, and something tight went around his wrists. He hated to think of what Spectrum would do to ‘take care’ of the wounded, but he was alive. It was known that the enemy liked to trade prisoners, and this was better than the alternative.

0o0o0

Scarlet watched with approval as Lieutenant Mulberry directed the squad of commandos with her usual efficiency, sorting out the living, the wounded and the dead. The seven living ones were searched and handcuffed with thick zip ties, then the three uninjured were sat up against the wall and the wounded were quickly treated with wound foam and haemostatic dressings. They’d be handed over to Medical once they were sure they weren’t going to be a problem.

The plan had been thrown together on the way, but it’d worked beautifully. Mulberry led the squad to the corner before the main entrance into Medical - the one the soldiers were trying to break through. At the same time, he’d slipped into Medical by virtue of a maintenance access hatch on the level above, wriggled his way into the ceiling ducts and dropped down into the emergency surgical theatre - the one that had direct access to the roof helicopter hatch. It also had a shortcut accessway from the outside into the hangar for the pilot and maintenance crew - one that opened onto the passageway the Bereznik soldiers were in. It’d been a simple matter of sealing the inner door from the theatre into Medical, sealing the door from the hangar to the theatre for good measure, then opening the top hatch of the hangar to the elements. He’d shivered in the cold, waiting for Mulberry’s signal, then hit the emergency open on the accessway. Cue one localised decompression event that knocked the soldiers down and allowed his squad of five commandos to overwhelm a pack of… he paused to count … fifteen, in less than thirty seconds.

‘Some of them even had the good sense to listen to her and surrender,’ Scarlet mused, glancing at a terrified private who looked like he’d only just started to shave. ‘Hopefully the rest will follow suit.’ He took off his respirator, slung his rifle and crouched down beside the soldier. “What is your name?” he asked in Bereznikian. The language felt as rough as sand in his mouth. It was a modern conlang, a manufactured language that took a Cyrillic base and pasted a mash-up of Polish and Uzbek on top of it. It was a bastard of a thing to learn and they all had to do regular ‘brush up’ courses to keep up their fluency.

“I-Ilya,” the boy stammered. “My name is Ilya.”

One of the other survivors - a pig-faced man who stank like one - snarled something untranslatable at him, but Scarlet directed a glare at the brute and very deliberately drummed his first two fingers on his rifle strap. That shut him up. For good measure, Scarlet reached down, helped Ilya to his feet and brought him well away from the others.

“Ilya, what was the mission? How many of you were there?”

“Project Cloudbase,” Ilya reported, looking like he was almost ready to wet himself in terror. “Fifty four of us were on the SPJ-B, we were to capture Cloudbase, make a foothold. More soldiers would be flown in once we had the foothold. We shot down an SPJ with a Lightning jet and took its place.”

‘...the Lightnings are the stealth fighters…’ Scarlet threaded the plan together like beads on a string. ‘A fake SPJ as a Trojan Horse, then once they’ve got a beachhead, they’ll flood the base and overwhelm us. Well,’ he glanced away, ‘that’s what they think they’ll do.’

As one of the senior officers he knew about the secondary orders the Angels had in the event of the base being boarded. Cloudbase was quite simply too powerful to be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. If the base was attacked, the enemy took control, and the self-destruct option wasn’t available, their orders were to shoot Cloudbase out of the sky.

‘And they know exactly where to hit her, Chief Onyx and Destiny put their heads together and spent several days going over the plans to make sure because they might only get one shot.’ Scarlet pulled down his cap microphone so he could transmit. “Scarlet to Colonel White, Medical is secure and I have intel.”

“Go ahead, Captain.”

0o0o0

Confined to the Radar Room by his condition, Blue was doing his best to behave and keep his attention on his assigned post: watching the skies for anyone else moving in to pounce. It wasn’t easy though. Sitting here in relative safety and listening to the radio chatter from his brothers in arms while they sallied out to defend their base was in the top twenty of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

“They’ve got this sir,” was the soft murmur from Morris, one of his commandos (and assigned babysitter - as a Colour Captain he’d be a prize prisoner). “Trust ‘em, they’ve got this.”

“Thanks Morris.” Blue nodded, his eyes still on the radar screen and the white arrowheads of the three circling Angel Interceptors: Destiny, Harmony and Symphony. Rhapsody and Melody were lying low in the Amber Room; they hadn’t been able to get to the other two Interceptors or any other aircraft before Hangar Control was overrun.

Right now Lieutenant Pine had command of his usual commando team. After sending Morris to babysit him, Pine had linked up with Magenta and his team and they were slowly moving towards the Amber Room on their way to the main hangar, scooping up any Cloudbase personnel that they found along the way and either adding them to the group or sending them to a safe zone.

Blue shoved all that out of his head as something odd caught his attention. “Huh…” Three button presses and a dial twist got the radar feed replaying on a different screen.

“Sir?” Morris peered over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“Trouble.” He jumped onto the group radio channel. “Radar Room to Colonel White, I think we’ve got company, I’m seeing artefacts on the extreme edge of our radar range and Scarlet said the enemy had brought their stealth fighters.”

“Understood, Captain Blue, keep looking for them,” White ordered.

“S.I.G.”

Someone must have been passing the message to the Angels at the same time because the three Interceptors abruptly changed their orbit, tightening their circle to stay within the protective envelope of the base defences.

‘Be safe out there,’ Adam silently bid them, then turned his focus back to his screens. He couldn’t do much, but he’d do everything he could.

0o0o0

At the same time Blue noticed the radar anomaly, Grey was steeling his heart as they slipped past yet another dead crewmember, left sprawled where they’d fallen. This was the fifth body they’d found, all of them shot in the back and all of them unarmed.

“Cowards,” someone spat, but that was the only break in his team’s discipline.

Grey approved of that. It made it much easier to lead them into doing the right thing: take the justifiable actions required to defend his crew and his ship. With every body they passed it was getting harder and harder to resist the urge to stray from the rules of engagement and do something closer to outright murder.

“What’s the plan, sir?” His team leader, Lieutenant Flax, murmured the question. “If you say ‘make ‘em walk the plank’ I’m sure Onyx can whip one up.”

Grey huffed a laugh. One of the many reasons why he liked Flax so much was the man’s ability to read his mind. “Tempting, but no.” He mentally ran through a couple of scenarios and settled on the easiest one, beckoning his team to huddle close for the briefing. “C’mon, I have an idea.”

0o0o0

Chief Engineer Onyx, late of the World Navy, head grease monkey of Cloudbase, and problem-solver and trouble-shooter extraordinaire, was worried.

He wasn’t so worried about the Bereznik soldiers currently trying to break into Engineering - he had complete faith in Grey and they’d had enough time to weld some spare steel plates up across the doorframe, park a couple of forklifts in front and put some precariously balanced drums of various liquids on top of the safety cages, poised to fall onto any hapless intruders. No, what he was worried about was the way his people hadn’t picked up weapons, but instead reached for their tools - air rivet guns, plasma torches and more - and made adjustments to them for obviously lethal intent.

Surveying the sight, Onyx shook his head and tried to hide his laugh. “Okay people, no violating the Geneva Convention with ‘cruel and unusual’ on my watch. Tools down, guns up. Rubber meets the road now, folks.”

He was about to say more when his radio crackled.

“Grey to Onyx, we’re moving in.”

“Hunker down!” Onyx bellowed, ducking behind a barricade made of heavy coils of wire.

Everyone quickly obeyed, swapping their unconventional weapons for conventional ones and making for cover.

A heartbeat’s pause, then it sounded like a thunderstorm had been dragged into the base and let loose. The thick doors had to have been compromised, they barely even muffled the cacophony of flash-bangs going off. Guns blasted, feet pounded on the deck, then everyone’s ears popped from a rapid decompression.

The sudden silence that followed was almost oppressive.

Onyx was debating if he should call Grey or not - he didn’t want to interrupt the captain if he was in a tricky spot or in the middle of doing something - then his radio crackled again.

“Grey to Onyx, all clear. You stay buttoned up, but can one of your engineers drop us a med kit from one of the maintenance accessways? We have a couple of prisoners.”

“S.I.G.” Onyx pointed to one of the engineers and waved for her to go do exactly that. “What happened to the rest of them?”

“Gave them a chance to surrender, they didn’t, so we chased them to an airlock.”

Onyx didn’t have to think twice about his answer. Just before he locked the security doors, he saw the bastards cut down three of his people without even a blink. “Nicely done, Captain. Med kit’s on it’s way.”

Chapter Six

“Vladimir! Fozil! Answer me!” In the captured Hangar Control Room, Colonel Pyotr Jesionowski let go of the talk button, his heart pounding double-time as he waited for an answer. Sokolov was still talking, but the other two? Nothing.

The radio crackled, then an unfamiliar voice issued from it. “I’m sorry but your officers can’t come to the radio right now, can I take a message?”

Jesionowski let go of his radio and cursed Cloudbase, cursed General Kovalenko, and cursed the idiots in charge of his country for thinking that they’d be able to pull off a stunt like this! He whirled to face Lieutenant Bartek. “You told me you could hack into their systems! You told me you could plant a virus and take control of this base!” A solid kick to the ribs and the technology specialist was off the chair and sprawled on the floor. “Now two teams are dark and we are no closer to taking this base!”

“I don’t understand why it’s not working!” the specialist bleated, holding his aching side. “According to the information from B.E.S.A. it should have worked! We got to the interface before their central control could lock us out!”

Jesionowski snarled and stalked away before he could give into the temptation to shoot the man in the head. ‘I am down twenty five men and the enemy have our radios! They can listen to everything we say! What are my options? We have their hangar, we have our SPJ-B, I could leave… no, their air defences will shoot me down as soon as I’ve cleared the deck, and that’s without their much vaunted ‘Angels’ chasing me. Surrender? No, if I’m handed back, I’ll be taken into the woods and shot. If they think I’ve said anything, my family will be killed. But can this be salvaged? Sokolov is still on the way to the command deck…’ he stopped, eyes wide as a possible solution occurred to him. ‘Wait… the command deck… if we can take that…’ Pyotr recalled what he’d seen of Cloudbase’s exterior as they came in to land and quickly ran the odds. ‘It will be a gamble, but it’s a chance. A chance I have to take. High Command will not be forgiving if I return empty-handed.’ He knew exactly what High Command did with failures. Early in his career, he’d been one of the ones who removed what was left of them. ‘If we can take the command deck, we have the base. But how do we get up there…?’ He drummed his fingers on his holstered pistol…then remembered the second radio on his combat webbing. “Bartek!” He whirled to face the man. “Get everyone together, I have a plan.”

0o0o0

The arrowhead formation of three Angel Interceptors faintly glowed against the backdrop of the deepening night, their skins lightly brushed by the light of the waning crescent moon.

“Radar is still clear, over.”

‘How on earth is she so calm?’ Symphony flicked her eyes over the Interceptor’s HUD as Harmony finished her check in. Absolutely nothing disturbed that woman’s composure. ‘Even that time she got shot down she was completely un-fussed. It’s surreal.’

“D’accord, Angel Two. Angel Three?”

“Nothing on my scopes, Angel Leader,” Symphony replied, again lifting her eyes from the HUD to sweep the dark skies with the ‘Mark One Eyeball’ as Scarlet and Grey put it. ‘The other side brought their Molniyas, we can’t trust the radar.’ She wasn’t looking for the shape of another jet - an almost impossible task - but looking for what wasn’t right. It was being aware of movement, a sparkle of reflection, the glow of a jet engine, or if someone was particularly dumb, a cloud sliced by the knife of an airframe or twisted by one’s passage. ‘Oh I hope they’re an arrogant one, they make mistakes, and to misquote Sun Tzu, you don’t interrupt an enemy making a mistake, unless it’s to kill him…’ Her hands flexed on the controls. She really, really wanted to hurt that country for what they did to Adam, what they did to Paul, and what they were trying to do now. ‘...no, down girl, cool it.’ Karen took in a deep breath, held it, then let it out again. ‘Can’t get distracted. Don’t be stupid or it’s you going home in a box, not them.’

She guided her Interceptor through another circuit of the base, then cast an eye over her status screen. ‘Got another… hour and a half in the tank. Then we’ll have to land and that’s when things could get really interesting, really quickly. No way we can hook up to a Camelback refueller, not with Molniyas and who knows what else about. We could sit on the carrier deck, but that’d make us sitting ducks. The ‘mayday’ got out though, there’s backup coming. But when? No, no, focus. Keep your eye on the ball.’

Another orbit, but this time Destiny brought her nose up and swung out and over to bring them into a line formation.

Another sound off of negatives on the radio.

Another orbit.

Another sound off.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And… ‘...wait…’ Symphony strained her eyes, then sucked in a breath when she recognised the distant blue-orange flare of the Molniyas’ signature triple afterburners as an aircraft spun to intercept them. ‘Just the one. He’s either brave, stupid, or trying to bait a trap.’ Her crisp warning of “Bogey two o’clock low!” was overlapped by Harmony’s sharp “Movement on the deck! Helicopter!”

“Angels, take the bogey, we have the heli’!”

“Oui, Colonel. Angels, on me!” Destiny ordered, her Interceptor twisting through the thin air after their enemy.

“S.I.G.” Symphony knew her grin was tight and feral as she shoved the yoke forwards and dumped fuel into the engines. She almost felt sorry for the other pilot. Almost. They were the ones who’d picked the fight, after all.

It wasn’t the Angels’ fault that whoever this idiot was, they were sorely outclassed.

0o0o0

“It worked!” one of the sergeants grinned tightly as the three white jets spun to intercept the Bereznik fighter.

“Of course it did!” Jesionowski snarled from behind his respirator. He almost felt sorry for the doomed pilot of BZ-762, but the lie of ‘reinforcements are just behind you, they’re running dark to surprise the enemy’ and the sacrifice of the stealth fighter was necessary if the mission was to be salvaged. BZ-762 only had to survive long enough to draw the Angels away from the base long enough for the helicopter to land on the helipad at the top of the Control Tower. The base defences were all pointed outwards to take out anyone approaching or leaving, but nothing was positioned to cover a hop from the carrier deck to the upper tower.

It had taken some creative thinking to figure out how to communicate the message to Sokolov, his last surviving team leader, but while the enemy knew their language, they didn’t know all of their stories, and language was more than just words. ‘Nowak at the port’ had been enough to convey the message. Commodore Nowak’s clever two-pronged attack on the ports at Baltiysk during the Bereznik revolution was required reading. ‘And for good reason, one strike from above and a second strike from below was a masterstroke of tactics.’ Jesionowski shook his head to make himself focus. Hotwiring the Spectrum helicopter had taken far too long, but now they were crammed into it and making the short flight up.

Leaning forward to watch over the pilots’ shoulders, they were level with the starboard observation tube - and what a piece of hubris that useless thing was - for just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of figures rushing around through the control room, then they were lofted above the base. The skids were kissing the deck at almost the same moment a blossom of fire announced the completion of BZ-762’s mission, then they were surging across the rough surface to the hatch.

‘One last throw of the dice…’ Colonel Pyotr could feel the heat being stolen from his body by the thin air as he watched the sappers fit the breaching charges. ‘...one last chance. It’s a desperate gamble, but fortune favours the bold.’ One of the sappers gave him a thumbs up, they backed well off and he gave the nod.

A sharp explosion, the smoke was whipped away by the wind, and Colonel Pyotr Jesionowski of the Bereznik Army girded himself for the final fight.

Chapter Seven

“Hold the line!” Lieutenant Anton Sokolov roared over the sound of gunfire, flashbangs and screaming. His team had been harassed at every point by fighters popping out of maintenance shafts and access hatches or daring ambushes at intersections and cross-passages. One of his best had even been taken out by a knife thrown by a red-headed she-devil in a white uniform!

Speed and a cluster of hostages they’d picked up along the way had been their saviours, but now they were forced to stop by a massive set of doors that blocked their path from the main body of the craft into the port side strut holding up the Control Tower. ‘But if we can get in, then we can cause even more damage,’ Sokolov thought to himself. “Get those doors open!” he snapped at the specialist fiddling with the control panel. “Move the hostages to the front!” He didn’t want to, he wanted to save them for convincing the men in the Control Room to open their doors, ‘but we have to survive long enough to get there.’

Someone must have noticed the five hostages - three women, two men, all frightened but putting a brave face on it - being pushed to the front, because the enemy guns fell silent.

Sokolov listened intently, but over the sound of his and his men’s harsh breathing, a sniffle out of one of the hostages, and the humming of the base, there wasn’t anything to suggest an ambush or counterattack being prepared. ‘Soft-hearted fools.’ Sokolov willed his breathing to even out and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist. ‘We would have just shot them all and been done with it. Should I push it?’ he asked himself. ‘See if I can threaten to shoot one of them if they don’t open the doors for me?’ He slid his glance over to the specialist, still hard at work. ‘No, not yet.’

Perhaps a minute ticked by, he wasn’t sure how long, but it was enough to make him and everyone else twitchy. Nothing was happening? Why?

Sokolov was considering his options when the other side made their move.

“Bereznik soldiers,” a man shouted from somewhere down the hallway, “I want to negotiate for the hostages.”

Whoever he was, his accent was abominable.

Sokolov glanced at his lieutenant and saw he was thinking the same thing - more sentimental nonsense - but it could be useful, if only to gain more time and potentially a more valuable hostage. “Step out into the open and put down your weapons, then we can talk, Spectrum!”

A murmur of conversation - someone was not happy about this - then a man in a dirty red tunic, boots and cap came out into the hallway. Telegraphing his every movement, he put down his rifle and pistol, then took three steps forwards, his hands raised. “I am Captain Scarlet,” he introduced himself. “I’m here to negotiate.”

“Come closer, Scarlet.” Sokolov beckoned mockingly. “Shouting is not good for negotiation.” At the same time a gesture had his men turning their attention in all directions. This would be a perfect distraction for an ambush.

He didn’t look happy about it, but the captain obeyed, walking forwards until he was within a couple of metres of the group. The hostages shifted restlessly, but a harsh noise from the men guarding them quickly put a stop to that.

“So, you wish to ‘negotiate’,” Sokolov began, lip curling in a sneer and heavy sarcasm on the last word. “What do you have to bargain with, ‘Captain’ Scarlet?”

A flicker of irritation crossed the man’s face, but he quickly dispensed with it. “The lives of you and your men,” was the matter-of-fact response. “Let the hostages go and surrender, and you get to live. Don’t, and you won’t.”

“Oh? And what is to keep me from taking you hostage as well?” Sokolov replied, doing his best to maintain a veneer of bravado over how the man’s inhuman calm chilled him to his bones. He gestured towards the hostages with his rifle. “While the sight of their brains splattered over the deck might not move your Colonel White, I think he’ll hesitate over the same fate befalling you.”

“You don’t want to do that.” The words were uttered with the same confidence that one would state that fire is hot - and they carried the same undertone of warning.

“And why is that?” Sokolov demanded, trying to show that the man’s supernatural calm wasn’t getting under his skin and failing.

“Because then I’ll definitely kill you.”

Again the words were spoken with that unshakeable confidence that what he was saying was True.

‘What does he know that I don’t?!’ Sokolov was well past ‘rattled’ now. Yes, the captain had his hands raised in theoretical surrender, but there was no trace of surrender in his voice or face. This was such a stupid, hair-brained ploy that there had to be something else in the works, some trick up the man’s sleeve, but for the life of him he just couldn’t figure out what!

The minutes stretched on, then either they reached some predetermined point or Scarlet’s patience ran out. Somehow his face didn’t move, but his expression hardened into something dark and dangerous. “Last chance Sokolov, surrender and release the hostages.”

Startled by the use of his name, Sokolov was drawing in a breath, readying to order his men to shoot the captain and be done with it, when there was a sudden blur of movement to his right and his lieutenant made a gagging noise, rifle clattering to the ground and his hands flying up to his throat and the dagger that had suddenly appeared there. Sokolov and the men closest to him tore their eyes off the captain, giving in to that basic human instinct to look, and that was the last mistake they got to make.

Sokolov was vaguely aware of the hostages diving to the floor and a blur of red, then the man was in the midst of them, a knife in one hand as he ducked and wove between them, blood flying in the air. He managed to get his rifle pointed in the right direction, his finger squeezing the trigger with the desperate hope that something would hit the he-devil, but his shots skimmed past the man’s ear as he grabbed the rifle and yanked on it. There was a burst of white hot pain as the knife bit deep into his armpit, then he knew no more.

0o0o0

Breathing hard, Scarlet stood in the human wreckage and waited for the others to catch up. Wincing at the needling prickle of healing burns - gun barrels got hot, quick - he checked his left hand for any bits caught in the raw wounds, was assured there weren’t any, then looked at the door. ‘Just in time,’ was his conclusion, confirmed by a glance at the control panel. They’d almost cracked the lockdown, things would have gotten very bad very quickly if they’d gotten past it.

Motion drew his attention back outwards - Pine and Mulberry were leading the commandos up, Magenta, Rhapsody, and Melody were close behind, and Lieutenant Beryl, Magenta’s team leader, was bringing up the rear.

Magenta was saying something as he handed over his weapons - probably telling him how stupid that was, going by his expression - but Scarlet couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in his ears.

“Magenta, I can’t hear you,” Scarlet told him as he holstered his pistol. He knew he was probably half-shouting because he couldn’t hear himself, but he couldn’t help that. “That bastard let his gun off right next to my ear!”

That got a - to him - soundless ‘Oh’, then a flurry of sign language.

Scarlet could feel his heart skip a beat when he interpreted everything. The Control Room was under attack. Ochre and his team were already in there - possibly having somehow broken all rules of nature and physics to get there just as the breaching charges went off - but they needed backup, now. “Mulberry, secure this,” Scarlet waved his hand at the area, “Angels, stay here, everyone else, move!”

0o0o0

Time had slowed to a glacial crawl.

Colonel White hunched behind his desk, ‘Cap firmly on his head for protection, respirator clamped to his face, and pistol in hand. He was somewhat illogically annoyed by how Green had planted himself at his left side and Ochre put himself on his right, as if he couldn’t look after himself, but Ego shouted down Id and reminded him of the bitter truth that this was their job. He was their commander, the proverbial king on the chessboard. He was not easy to replace.

‘Whoever is in charge up top knows what they’re doing,’ White mused as the tension level in the room ratcheted up in sync with the seconds slipping away. Two initial explosions had made the room ring like a bell - one at the lift to the helipad, the second at the maintenance hatch that fed into the corridor outside. Grenades had followed the windstorm of decompression, flash bangs that filled the room with light and noise, then high ex that filled the room with shrapnel.

Then there was nothing, an unsettling pause that had everyone on their toes.

‘It’s the same as terrorist bombing tactics,’ White reminded himself. ‘One to cause chaos and confusion, then a second, when people have started to come out of hiding and first responders are arriving on scene. We have to wait them out.’

Waiting was not easy, especially not with two possible entry points. They couldn’t check the cameras either, Green’s control panel and the screen behind his desk had taken bad hits and rerouting things would mean Green would have to get out of cover. The damage also meant that their radios were cut until someone could re-route the ‘caps to point-to-point comms, instead of their usual default of feeding through the systems here. They hadn’t had a chance to do so yet, and being so isolated from the rest of his team was making him that much more uneasy.

White couldn’t help shifting restlessly, his knees weren’t happy about this and the cold was biting into his fingers and ears - they were risking frostbite if this took much longer. In addition the box of the respirator was digging into his thigh, the air from it tasted funny and the mask smelled like new plastic. It was utterly ridiculous, really, that in the middle of a life and death situation with world-wide consequences - and interplanetary too once the Mysterons found out about all this and found something they could capitalise on - that little things like old knees and odd smells took on such disproportionate proportions. ‘And yet at the same time, in the heat of battle people can take grievous injuries and quite simply not notice until they try to take a step and their shattered leg folds underneath them.’

A cluster of dark things dropped down the shattered lift shaft, landing with a series of hollow clunks. Thanks to the time dilation effect of adrenaline, White had just enough time to register them as grenades and gird himself with the thought of ‘here we go’ before they exploded in a cacophony of noise and white hot shards of metal. In their wake, the first howling Bereznik soldier dropped down, his gun already spitting fire and lead, and the battle was on.

0o0o0

Outside, in the Radar Room, Blue listened to the chaos and watched the screens with the other. Unlike in the Control Room, he and Morris could get at the security feeds, which very quickly gave them a good look at the situation.

“Blasting the maintenance hatch was a distraction, they were trying to get us to split our forces to cover both points,” was his conclusion, seeing the huddle of black-clad bodies around the top of the elevator shaft. A quick scan of the other screens told him that backup was coming now that the hostage situation had been fixed (and he was going to have words with Scarlet about that later) but if they would get there in time was going to be the question. The two working Control Room cameras showed that several people were already down and there were more Bereznik soldiers still to come.

There was only one choice he could make. Blue glanced at Morris. “I’m going to do something stupid. Are you coming or are you going to try and stop me?”

To his surprise Morris barked a rough laugh. “Sir, you’re the one who keeps pace with Captain Scarlet, I don’t have a chance of stopping you.”

“Can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” Blue asked with an amused grin.

“Sir, yes sir.” Morris grinned back, then got to business. “What’s the plan?”

Blue stabbed his finger at the helipad screen. “They’ve got their backs to us. Let’s teach them how bad an idea that is.”

Technically Morris’ expression was a grin, but it was the grin of a dog baring its teeth for the lunge. “Sir. Yes, sir.”

0o0o0

“You two, go!” Jesionowski waved forward the next two soldiers. They were already psyched up for the charge and howled like wild animals as they dropped down the elevator shaft to join the others. The scream of jet engines caught his attention and Jesionowski looked up to see the helplessly orbiting Angels. They couldn’t fire, they’d be killing their own. ‘And I will take a lot of pleasure out of shooting those bitches down with their own bases’ defences.’ Letting his rifle dangle from its strap, Jesionowski raised both hands to flip them off. It was stupid and childish, but he didn’t care. Victory was so close he could taste it!

He was about to send that idiot Bartek and one of the pilots down next, when the two men suddenly cried out and crumpled, the sprays of their blood freezing into red pellets that hit the deck alongside them.

“Get to the helicopter!” he yelled to his remaining three men, already charging for the scant cover it provided. “Where’s it coming from?!”

“Ther-uck!” Mid-point, one of the soldiers jerked as two bloody snowballs exploded out of his back and he dropped to the deck, very dead.

Jesionowski followed where he’d been pointing and spied two figures emerging from the blown-open maintenance hatch, expertly covering each other as they moved forwards, keeping him and his soldiers pinned down. More bullets stitched holes through the tail of the helicopter, cutting it off as an escape route, and the roar of the circling jets seemed to take on a mocking tone, the women a witness to his looming defeat.

The soldier on his left screamed and dropped, a crater gouged out of his thigh, then the right fell away, his face a mask of blood.

Reason cast to the frozen winds that ripped at his uniform, Jesionowski loaded his last clip, his eyes fixed on the one in blue - the officer of the pair. “I will take you with me!” he screamed as he surged to his feet and lunged around the blunt nose of the helicopter to charge. He got one, two, three steps forwards, then he slipped on a puddle of frozen blood and one, two, three bullets punched through his chest and gut. His legs dropped out from under him, the rest of him followed, and he was on his back, staring up at the brightening sky.

The officer in blue loomed over him as grey encircled his vision. For some reason he seemed familiar, he knew that face from somewhere… but there was no time to chase down that thought as Colonel Pyotr Jesionowski breathed his last.

0o0o0

Dawn had brightened into true morning, the low-angled light casting weird shadows, and a thin-lipped Ochre stood alone in the wreckage of the Control Room, surveying the ruins with hard eyes.

The elevator and maintenance hatch had been sealed against the outside world, so it was warm again, but he and everyone else kept their respirators on, needing the air-tight seal to keep out the smells of a desperate, hard-fought battle - while the wounded had been removed, the dead were still here, and there were many of them.

Rick took a steadying breath, his hands clenching and unclenching on the rifle he also still had on - they couldn’t be sure that they’d gotten them all, not yet. Everything and everyone was still being tallied up, they couldn’t drop their guard yet.

Another steadying breath, deep and even despite the smell of plastic that came off the mask.

This had been close.

The suicidal charges from the Bereznik soldiers had done a lot of damage to both people and property, and if it hadn’t been for Blue and Morris cutting off the supply from up top and the reinforcements charging in a split second later, they’d have been overwhelmed.

A snapping and crunching of debris underfoot was the warning, and he turned to see Scarlet, Blue and Grey converging on him from different directions. ‘They all look as worn out as me, but we can’t stop yet, we’re not safe yet.’ He knew why they were here though, the colonel had had a chunk taken out of his arm, so while the colonel was down for treatment, he had temporary command. According to protocol he was supposed to be next door in the Information Centre, where Green and Magenta were busy setting up shop, but he’d needed to take a minute and survey things here.

Yes, this had been close, far, far too close, but they’d won. Rick held that thought tightly. They’d done it. They’d won. ‘And no one will be able to surprise us like this again,’ he reminded himself. ‘We don’t make the same mistake twice.’

A polite clearing of the throat, then a question from Scarlet drew his attention back out again. “Do you think we’ll have to land for repairs?”

“I think so.” Ochre made a face. Landing Cloudbase was an ordeal all on its own, doing so without a functioning Control Room made it that much harder by several orders of magnitude. “Onyx is still assessing the damage, but first look says yes.”

“Brilliant.” Scarlet groaned, then shook his head and looked at Blue. “Oh, yes, before I forget. Adam?”

“Yeah?” The other officer turned to look at him.

Reaching out with his good hand, Paul cuffed Adam’s shoulder gently. “Idiot.” The word was said with fondness. “Stupid stunts are my job, remember?”

“Yes, but you were busy with your own stupid stunt, I saw it on camera,” Adam reminded him. “So I stepped in.”

“True, but you’re the one who has to explain it to Karen, she saw everything from Angel Three,” Paul shot back.

“I’ll tell her I learned it all from you,” Adam replied with a straight face.

“You two are worse than any of my cadets,” Brad groaned and shook his head theatrically, then got down to business. “I got a message just before I came up. Doc wants you, so shoo.”

“Which one?” was Paul’s cheeky question.

“Both of you, and either of them.” Grey drew himself up and pointed at the doors. “Go.”

Rick laughed at the woebegone looks on both of them as they turned and slouched towards the door like a pair of recalcitrant schoolboys.

They were going to be okay.

Epilogue

Ten months later…

“Ohhhh I needed this.” With a groan that probably would have made her maiden aunt blush, Svetlana laid back in the steaming bath in her apartment and felt the heat seep into sore and aching muscles.

A soothing soak before bed was exactly what the doctor ordered, and it was pure bliss.

She got perhaps five minutes of peace then… “Ah, good morning, my little Bunny.” Svetlana smiled and rubbed her 28-week belly as her baby woke up and began her usual routine of wriggling and stretching in her close confines. “Oof!” A well-placed kick to her ribs made her jerk and the bathwater slosh in response.

“Lana?” Anatoly’s voice drifted through the open door. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just Bunny reminding me why we call her that,” Svelana called back, then settled again with a smile. Her husband had been absolutely adorable with his attentiveness ever since she’d shown him the pink lines on the stick. Neither of them had expected a honeymoon baby, but they hadn’t exactly been preventing one either.

‘It’s a pity that I can’t retire, he and Bunny aren’t safe yet, but that will change. I’m just glad he understands why I have to go back.’ Cobra rubbed her belly again. Franzechi, that wonderful man, had sent her an extra packet of documents this afternoon, cunningly concealed in the expected dispatches. Reading those documents had immediately cemented her vague notions into concrete reality - incipient motherhood had caused quite a shift in her thinking - and she had immediately started planning. This was a marvellous opportunity. There wasn’t much time to lay the groundwork, Bunny would be here soon and she would quite rightfully be consuming her time and focus, so kicking things into action now would mean she would be that much further ahead when she was back in her office.

A tap of a cane drew her attention back out as Anatoly came back in, a cup of Turkish apple tea in his free hand. Because it was Thursday, it was the tea glass with golden tulips and the spoon with a tumbled smoky quartz in the handle. Every cup of tea was either mint or apple these days, anything caffeinated turned her stomach and made Bunny very kicky. He carefully bent and put it on the tiled edge of the bathtub, then sat down on the closed lid of the toilet.

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” Svetlana slowly hoisted herself up into a sitting position - both because of the water and because she wasn’t exactly graceful right now.

“Nonsense, Lana, you are making a whole new human inside you! I will fuss to my heart’s content! And now that you have tea, my heart is content!” Anatoly grinned at her, resting his hands on the polished brass handle of the black-painted cane. He had by and large healed, but the limp would never go away. He had taken that in his stride - with the pun fully intended - declaring that as a professor of the written word, a cane was a must-have accessory to give him the needed gravitas and employ in his lectures for a little dramatic flair.

“Thank you!” Svetlana took one, two, three careful sips of tea, enough that she would be able to safely lie back and finish the rest without spilling, then put the cup back down so she could make herself comfortable before retrieving it. “Anatoly, do you have time to discuss something?”

“Of course, is it to do with those papers?” Anatoly asked, sobering. This was serious.

“It is,” Cobra nodded. “It’s to do with Project Cloudbase. Just before I took my leave, I proposed a new project. Franzechi sent me word today - General Benenora and his daughter have both approved it. The other generals have taken charge of the project and are working on it right now.”

“Both of them?” Anatoly sucked in a breath, his eyes wide. “What is it? If you can tell me, of course.”

“I need to, because I can’t do what I want to do without you and your approval,” Cobra told him. “It is called Project Stormcastle - and yes, you gave me the idea. We are going to build our own Cloudbase, Tolya. The research and development - the expensive part, in both time and materials - that’s already been done. If we can acquire the plans for Cloudbase, we can modify them and build our own version, one that is optimised to defend and protect our people and our nation. I have almost all of my agents working on it now.”

“Our own Cloudbase…” Anatoly breathed. “My love, that… that is marvellous!” He frowned. “But they have ousted you from the helm - again. That must burn.”

“It does, but that is a later problem. Building Stormcastle will take some time,” she cautioned, “a number of years, but we can do it. We have the manpower and we either have or can get the materials, all we need are the plans. By the time Stormcastle is ready to take to the skies, I will have made general for sure.”

Anatoly nodded, then frowned in confusion. “Yes, but, I still don’t understand. Why do you need my approval? What has this to do with me?”

“Because I know the generals, Tolya.” Cobra sobered. “General Kovalenko was one of three men who actually gave General Benenora good and sound advice. Now that he’s gone, it’s only Mirzayev and Tagaev, and they are both old men. Mirzayev is sick and Tagaev wants to retire as soon as he gets his pension. Once they’re gone, they’ll be replaced with yes men who’ll pound tables, yell until they’re red in the face and demand the impossible without considering what that actually means.”

Another nod from Tolya - he had listened to her venting about the inefficiencies of egos in the meeting chamber on several occasions.

“I know these men,” Cobra went on. “They will demand to be on board Stormcastle for her maiden flight, and they will not be able to tolerate the presence of anything that might be her equal. They will demand that her captain seek out Cloudbase and destroy her, and my organisation will be charged with finding her for them.”

“What…oh… that does not sound wise…” Anatoly swallowed hard. “They will fail?”

“Yes.” Cobra nodded. She took a sip of tea to wet her throat. “I have studied Colonel White. If he is who I suspect he is, he knows how to fight ship to ship. Even if he isn’t, he will know how to use Cloudbase and her defences to his best advantage, he has already had years at her helm. A new ship, an untried crew, and almost all of our country’s generals in the control room?” She shook her head, imagining the chaos of battle and so many men shouting conflicting orders at the captain and the crew. “The Western saying is ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, it will be a disaster.”

Her husband nodded thoughtfully, frowned, then his eyes widened again, but this time for a very different reason. “ ‘Almost all of our country’s generals’... Lana, I think I know where you are going. You will stay behind?”

“Yes,” Cobra nodded, pleased with his insight. “I and a selected handful of officers - colonels and department heads for the most part - will stay behind to ‘mind the store’. When the inevitable happens, we will step in to fill the gap. I will not take the leadership role, I am not for public speaking as you know, but I am looking for someone to take that role, and together we will lead our country into a glorious new future.” She reached out to take his hand. “I was wondering, Anatoly, if you would be interested in this position? Your students adore you, and many of your early students are already in positions of influence and leadership. There will be more by the time this comes to pass. Your colleagues respect you, and you can give a speech off the cuff that inspires the entire room.”

“I think…” Still holding her hand, Anatoly trailed off and looked around the bathroom, “...I think that I had better practice my speeches.” He smiled at her and brushed his lips over her knuckles before letting go. “But that is for later. Right now we have a nursery to build and our little Bunny to prepare for.”

“And a list of names to whittle down.” Svetlana smiled back. “I swear, your mother runs a better intelligence op than some of my officers. She is absolutely relentless!”

Anatoly laughed. They’d caught his mother looking for intel on Bunny at least five times now. She’d resorted to tears the last time they caught her digging in his writing desk, sorrowfully wailing that she just had to know if she would be welcoming a grandson or a granddaughter and what their name would be.

Neither of them were moved by her pleading. Even if they swore her to secrecy, as soon as she knew anything, she told everyone about it - up to and including when the morning sickness kicked in. That had been the breaking point and they’d refused to tell her anything since.

“Come, Rose, finish your tea, then we’ll go back to the list while you soak.” Anatoly said as he carefully got back to his feet. “I’ll fetch the notebook.”

“Yes, love.” Svetlana smiled as she picked up her cup and took another sip, casting her mind towards the future.

Stormcastle would be the patient work of years, but she was a very patient woman, and the lessons learned from building Stormcastle would be put to work building Stormcastle’s yet to be named successor, the craft that would, once and for all, ensure the safety of her people and her family. ‘It will be my gift to you, little Bunny.’ She stroked her belly again. ‘I promise, you will be able to raise your own children in peace and without fear.’

Svetlana laid back in the bathtub and let her mind drift as she dreamed of the day her people could live in the proverbial sunshine, out from under the dark cloud of oppression.

As she had told Tolya, it would take time, but anything of worth was worth the wait for it.